Where Once Was Light
by Darkflame5
Summary: Two years after the Battle of Easter, darkness is rising once again, a darkness far more sinister than any that has been seen since the downfall of the Golden Age. This time, the Guardians alone may not be enough to hold back the tide, and they could be forced to rely on the help of an unexpected ally.
1. Prologue

AN: Umm, so yeah. I finally watched Rise of the Guardians. I then discovered/fell in love with Pitch's backstory because of how depressingly tragic it is. I have also managed to locate and read the first two of the Guardians of Childhood books. (I swear, the author tries to make Pitch as much of a sympathetic character as the fans do). So anyways, that's where this came from. I've got a basic story outline planned out, but not much written yet, and with school starting, I don't know how frequently I'll be able to update. But I wanted to go ahead and get this first bit posted up here anyways.

* * *

Darkness. That was all there was anymore. All that there had been for what seemed like an eternity. It swirled around him and through him. Laughing at him. _Mocking_ him.

Voices floated in the darkness around him. Hideous, terrible voices, whispering in his mind.

_Weak_, they called him. _Useless. A failure._

The darkness surrounding him seemed to writhe, condensing until it looked almost tangible. All the shadows in the cave seemed to congregate to that one spot, even the ones inside of him. They poured out of his mouth and eyes, and from every other part of his being, leaving him hollowed out. Empty.

The man stared with a kind of detached horror as the shadows formed themselves into a mirror image of his own appearance.

The shadow-man's face formed a satisfied smirk as it examined its new form, its yellow eyes flickering to the figure on the floor. It strode over to its counterpart, seemingly taking great pleasure in towering above him.

"We have decided," it said silkily, bending down slightly to look the other man in the eyes, "that you are no longer necessary to us, and are no longer _worthy_ to serve as our vessel. You have failed us three times already, and twice against those wretched Guardians. So we simply will have to destroy them ourselves, along with all of their precious children."

The serene expression had slipped from the creature's face, to be replaced with a feral snarl. It swiped a hand across the other man's face, drawing three lines of bright red across it.

"_You_ have become nothing but a _weakness!_ Once, you gave us the power to conquer _planets!_ But ever since we were imprisoned by that Nightlight boy, you have only made us _weak!_

"So now," it said, the snarl turning into the most terrifying grin imaginable, "we have no further use for you."

And as the creature stepped back and melted into the shadows of the cave, it began to laugh. The man, eyes still vacant, reeled and fell backwards onto the ground, mind lost in a fog and oblivious to the passage of time.

* * *

I know this sort of story has been done to death, but the idea wouldn't leave me alone until I got some of it written down. At any rate, I don't really care that it's not that original, I'm gonna go ahead and write it anyways, and hopefully some people will enjoy it.

Please feel free to review and let me know what you think.


	2. Darkness Rising

It had been just over two years since Pitch's defeat that fateful Easter, and since then everything had been going smoothly. That is, everything _had_ been going smoothly up until about a month ago. That was when the Nightmare King had suddenly reappeared, his armies of darkness poised once again to cover the world in a shadow of fear.

The Guardians, of course, had banded together once again to combat Pitch's assault. And for the most part, they had succeeded. They had driven back the Nightmare King's armies time and again, across all four corners of the globe. Yet as hard as the Guardians fought, their enemy always seemed to be two steps ahead of them. People would disappear, there was large scale theft in small towns that had always seemed safe, and everywhere people were afraid to go out after dark. An undercurrent of fear was rising among children and adults alike all over the world, and no matter how often Pitch's forces were driven back, it seemed that nothing could be done to stop it.

Perhaps if they had been able to fight Pitch himself, it might have been simpler, but the Nightmare King was proving impossible to find. Sometimes they would catch a glimpse of him while they were fighting. Out of the corner of their eye they would see that tall, dark robed figure, but when they would turn to face him there would just be those yellow eyes gleaming at them before disappearing back into the shadows, and that cold, cruel laugh.

Needless to say, the Guardians were becoming extremely frustrated. And although none of them would dare to voice the thought aloud, they were worried too.

But on top of everything else, they still had to try and keep up with all of their normal duties as well, which is why Sanderson found himself floating above the outskirts of a small town one evening, determined to make sure the children still had good dreams despite all of the uncertainty and fear in their waking lives.

The night had been a peaceful one so far, with no sign of any Nightmares or Fearlings. However, something felt off to the Sandman this evening. Perhaps it was simply the lack of anything happening, after a month of constantly being on the alert.

So when the Sandman _did_ detect a pack of Fearlings swarming about the edge of a nearby forest, he was hardly surprised. Scowling, Sandy swept downward, gold dreamsand whips forming in his hands. As he drew closer, he saw that the Fearlings seemed to be focusing their attention on a figure lying prone on the ground. Distracted by their prey, they failed to notice his presence until he had already destroyed several of them with his dreamsand, at which point most of the others turned and fled. The few that had been bold enough to remain were quickly dispatched, and Sandy was at last able to turn his attention to the being the Fearlings had been attacking.

It seemed to be just an ordinary adult human male, though Sandy couldn't shake the feeling that something about him seemed familiar. The man was clearly conscious, as he'd managed to push himself up onto one elbow, though it didn't look as if he'd be staying that way for long. Sandy wondered if the man had been conscious during the fight, or if he'd only regained his awareness afterwards. Though he supposed that it didn't really matter, since he wouldn't have been able to see anything anyways, even if he _did_ seem to be staring directly at Sanderson.

As Sandy was contemplating the problem of what to do with the man - dealing with adults was always so much more difficult than with children, but he couldn't very well just _leave_ the guy there either - a short, bitter laugh sounded from the man in question, causing Sandy to jump about a foot in the air in surprise.

"Saved by Sanderson. Fan_tastic_," said the man in a hoarse, but still very recognizable, voice, before the arm propping him up gave out and he slipped at last into unconsciousness.

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Aaand that's the end of chapter 1. I'm sorry that it was pretty much mostly exposition stuffs. I also apologize for not really being able to write fight scenes, even if there wasn't really much of one here.

Reviews prompt me to keep writing~


	3. Complications

Sanderson stared in bewilderment at the unconscious man in front of him, his mouth hanging slightly open. This was impossible. This was simply _not_ possible.

Actually, it was impossible on several different levels, but that was rather beside the point, as didn't change the fact that this _was not possible._

Closing his mouth, Sandy reached forward and prodded the unconscious man on the shoulder.

Perfectly solid.

Well. That ruled out the possibility that he'd just been hallucinating this whole thing. Sandy almost wished that he had. It would have made things _much_ simpler.

Instead, he was left to contemplate the question of why there was a man who looked and sounded like Pitch Black, but who also seemed to be completely human and who could see him, being attacked by Fearlings at the edge of a forest, at the same time that Pitch was supposedly somewhere _else_ leading his armies of darkness.

Sandy sighed silently. He just knew he was going to end up with a headache from all of this. Well, if he had to deal with this, then so did the rest of the Guardians. Besides, there was supposed to be a meeting at the Pole tomorrow anyways. He'd just get there a little early this way.

Turning, Sanderson began to form a plane out of his dreamsand that was slightly larger than the one he normally used. After all, he needed somewhere to put his "passenger" on the way to the Workshop. The plane complete, Sandy deposited guy-who-looks-like-Pitch into it, then floated himself up into the pilot's seat and headed off towards the North Pole.

-

Jack Frost laughed as he flew around, freezing a few last things here and there by touching them with his staff. It was getting to be summer up in the northern hemisphere now, so Jack had headed down south to start spreading winter in southern half of the globe.

Creating an intricate frost pattern on the surface of a frozen pond, Jack figured he should probably start heading back towards North's workshop if he wanted to be relatively on time for the meeting. Ever since Pitch had come back, the Guardians had been having regular meetings in an attempt to keep tabs on the Nightmare King and his armies, and to come up with a way to keep them from getting the upper hand, if not defeat them entirely.

"Wind, take me to the North Pole!" Jack called. The wind swirled around him in compliance, and Jack felt himself being rocketed up into the air, the pond below him dwindling down to a tiny speck before he sped northwards, leaving it far behind.

As he flew towards the Pole, Jack frowned slightly. Normally he loved flying. He'd loved it ever since he first became Jack Frost, even if he hadn't been very good at it back then. But right now, he was distracted by thoughts of the meeting. Personally, he thought these meetings were a huge waste of time. It's not like anyone ever had anything new to report. It was always, destroyed a few Fearlings or Nightmares here, arrived too late there. Not to mention, the meetings took up time that they _could_ be using to find Pitch.

Jack huffed and veered slightly off-course. There was no point in having depressing thoughts before he even got to the meeting. Obviously, he just needed a good distraction to cheer himself up.

A short while later, a laughing Jack Frost knocked the snowcap off of the highest peak in the Alps, hitting it with his staff as if it were a golf ball and watching to see how far it flew. Grinning, he resumed his earlier course towards the North Pole. His detour had cost him a little bit of time, but since he already would have been late anyways, Jack didn't see how it really mattered. Besides, what was the point of being able to fly if you were just going to pass up an opportunity like that?

When Jack finally arrived at the Workshop, it was to find the other four Guardians already waiting. As he flew through the window, they all turned to glare at him. This, of course, only caused Jack to grin back at them.

"Hey, guys. Sorry I'm late," he said, raising one hand up in greeting.

Bunnymund snorted skeptically at this but didn't comment, instead turning to North and saying, "Right, then. Now that the kid's here, can we go see whatever it is that's got Sandy all worked up?"

North glanced at Sandy, then nodded.

"Right. Follow me," he said, gesturing for them to follow, before turning and walking out of the globe room and down a hallway.

"Whoa, wait. What?" said Jack, looking completely lost.

"Well, maybe if you'd gotten here on time, you'd understand what's going on," Bunny said snidely as he followed North and Sandy out of the room.

Jack opened his mouth to retort, but the Tooth Fairy fluttered down between them, her hands stretched out towards either one of them as if to keep them separated.

"Guys, hey, let's not be fighting among ourselves right now, okay? Please?" Tooth said, looking back and forth between the two of them with a pleading smile.

Jack sighed. "Fiiine." And he followed the rest of the Guardians out of the room.

They followed North through the Workshop until they reached a room that was being guarded by several yetis. Upon entering, Jack could see that it was a bedroom of some sort. Or at least, it was a room with a bed in it. There wasn't really anything else in there, aside from what looked like a person lying on the bed and even more yetis standing guard.

Whoever was in here, North certainly wasn't taking any chances.

The five of them drew closer to the bed, North and Sandy hanging back a bit, as they already knew what was there. The other three didn't, however, and they all gasped when they saw the face of the person on the bed.

It was-well, what was it? At first glance, it seemed human, but then-

"Is that... Pitch?" Jack asked, glancing uncertainly back at North.

North just shook his head. "We do not know. Sandman found him, but he's not woken up."

A flurry of images flashed over Sanderson's head, depicting something to do with person-who-might-be-Pitch and a pack of Fearlings.

"Wait," said Tooth, "are you saying that he was _attacked_ by the Fearlings?"

Sandy nodded in confirmation.

"But..."

The Guardians all looked back towards the figure on the bed. His face was pale and drawn, with brow furrowed and mouth clenched as though he were in pain. One of the hands lying on top of the blankets twitched slightly.

Suddenly, the being's eyes flew open, causing all of the Guardians to start violently, and for several of them to give small yelps of surprise. (These Guardians would, of course, later deny that any such thing occurred.)

The man's eyes darted wildly around the room, taking in the small window, the door, the yetis, and the general lack of anything useful, before settling on the five Guardians.

The Guardians stared right back at him, or, more accurately, they stared at his eyes. Subconsciously, the Guardians had all expected for the man to have the same pale, yellowish colored eyes as Pitch.

He didn't.

This man's eyes were a bright, emerald green.

* * *

AN: This chapter was ridiculously fun to write, despite the fact that Jack commandeered most of it. Seriously, the only stuff in here that I'd had planned was the very beginning and the very end.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed, and please feel free to let me know what you thought~


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